The Mansion You Remember
by Trickster-jz
Summary: Sequel to The Fabulous Life Of Lilly Kane. You can know people inside out, and still be surprised by how they react to grief. Lilly is about to figure it out.


**The Mansion You Remember**  
**By Trickster-jz**

**Pairing/Character**: Lilly Kane, Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls, Duncan Kane, L/L, L/W, L/A, V/D, possible L/V  
**Rating**: M  
**Genre(s)**: AU, angst, mystery  
**Summary**: Events took a wide left turn a few months before Lilly canonically died. In Lilly's stead, Veronica Mars was murdered in her "pink" stage. You can know people inside out, and still be surprised by how they react to grief. Lilly is about to figure it out.  
**Spoilers**: Any and all of S1 is fair game. Nothing else should spoil you unless you already know about it.  
**Warnings**: This isn't as dark or hard 'R' as the prequel, but still in that area. Rating is for language and situations (though there is nothing explicit).  
**Disclaimer**: It all belongs to Rob Thomas. I am making no profit from this.  
**Author's Note**: This is the sequel to _The Fabulous Life Of _ (a 7 page short story, so don't be intimidated ;)). I advise reading it before this.

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_Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember...Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild...Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on...But if you're like me, you just keep chasing the storm._

-Veronica Mars

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The absurdity of it is, for a while they think Celeste might have done it. Apparently she was threatening Veronica. You nearly tore the bitch's hair and throat out when you heard that, but Celeste had an alibi, so you settled for the hair and now Mommy Dearest has to cut her hair and style it a certain way to hide the patch of skin. She hates you more than ever; Duncan glares at Celeste when he finds out about the threats, but keeps taking his anti-depressants like a good little Donut. You think maybe his episode scared him, too, and would keep him taking the meds even if he wasn't trying to drown out the memories of a blond-hair-sleeveless-red-satin girl who may or may not have been his half sister.

Case closed, they think maybe Veronica killed herself but no one will tell the devastated Sheriff that so it goes down as unsolved. The unsolved murder of a girl who slit her wrists, but who also had serious head trauma. Her boyfriend dumped her and Lianne's guilt is saying that somehow Veronica must have found out about the Lianne/Jake affair and that Keith might not really be her dad, and so people whisper that it's suicide.

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You know Veronica Mars didn't kill herself. She had _head trauma_—the coroner's first story was that, despite the lack of gruesomely visible marks, she had been hit over the head…or thrown against a wall, maybe…before she ever supposedly slit her forearms (length-wise, to make them bleed quickly, and how would Veronica Mars know that?). She didn't die because her hand swung a knife at her skin, when Veronica hated blood. And Veronica was upset about Duncan, but she damn well wasn't suicidal. The break-up was over a month—nearly two months—before, and in the last couple of weeks you had never seen your best friend so _determined_. She kept whisper-whisper-whispering with Logan about something, but that didn't make her stupid. Naïve, maybe, if she was trying to pick up Logan's pieces or if she was thinking that you and Logan could get back together with a little help.

Your best friend didn't kill herself. So that means—even if the case is closed and the sheriff's department is only humouring Keith—her killer is out there.

Enter you, centre stage, the grieving but not broken best friend, ready to rip a new one out of the bitch or bastard who killed your BFF and ruined your fabulous life.

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Logan gets harder, sharper, quicker to jump into a fight after Veronica dies. He used to do it to make you laugh at the idiot who didn't know who you were, or maybe to hear Veronica tell him to _stop please it doesn't matter_, like he was _her_ champion. You almost wonder if he's hoping sweet little Veronica will see his bullying and fighting and insolence from Heaven and come back to make him stop. You wonder if he would listen to her if she came down, or if he would keep going—get worse and worse and worse, even—so that she'd keep haunting him forever, his own little angel who needed his protection and died without it, his conscience from the day she died.

You wonder when the hell that happened, when Logan started to act like—to _realize_—Veronica was something special. You doubt you'll ever ask, except for the times when you're both really, really drunk and you can't expect an answer.

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Donut, of course, is a wreck. They have him on so many meds he could start a goddamned pharmacy—that always gives you a mental image of your dad's face if Donut turned down the presidency to be a drug dealer. Heh.

Celeste wants to keep Duncan home for a while, maybe get him a tutor instead of thrusting him back into school where the vultures are still picking the gossip off Veronica's bones, and everyone knows that maybe if Veronica killed herself it's Duncan's fault because he broke up with her just like that. (Never mind that most of them were saying it was "about time" he got rid of his girlfriend.) It isn't a matter of school, though, the way Celeste says—she doesn't want him to care that Veronica's dead, and she'll keep him away from anyone who can remind him that there ever was a Veronica Mars. Mommy Dearest just wants her perfect little boy to stay home with her forever. It doesn't matter, of course, what _you_ do.

Duncan doesn't really talk to your mom anymore—not since he found about the threats.

He stays in public school, but you're not sure he's, like, always _really there_.

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Logan isn't boring-by-predictability anymore. He's just…totally depressing and volatile, but not in the thrilling fuck-me-harder way that you like, not the way Aaron or Weevil is. He is no longer the boy you decided to want all those years ago. He isn't the boy, but he holds onto you tighter than ever. You think that maybe he's hoping you—or Veronica through you?—will keep him grounded.

Yeah. Like you, Miss Fucked-Your-Dad's-Friend-and-then-the-Pool-Boy, are a stabilizing influence, or like scrawny-in-a-cute-way Veronica could fill out your made-for-sex body.

You're pretty sure it's only a matter of time before he, like, self-destructs or something. It'll probably be hot, though, and he isn't really your problem as long as he remembers who and what you are and how to hit _just that spot_ when you want to go slamming into your orgasm and shattering into a million pieces that can't remember Veronica Mars.

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Look, fine. You love the Don—uh, Duncan, okay? He's your brother, you're required to love him by virtue of blood, blah, blah, blah.

Sure, your parents totally think he's perfect or something, or at least Celeste does, but he's tried to fix that when he can and it isn't really his fault that Cel-bitch-este doesn't listen to him when it's important. And maybe watching him and Veronica just made you think, _oh good god a long-term couple that needs to get laid _far_ from my sight_, but you knew he loved her, and you know Veronica loved him so you sometimes think he has a piece of her that you don't, so you're alternately nice in hopes that he'll give it to you, and jealous as all hell.

You think he isn't like Logan: he isn't running to self-destruction.

He's already there.

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Lianne, it seems, is another drunk slut in a town full of rich drunk sluts and whores and ice bitches. She's cracking, though, and you hope she'll leave soon. You don't want to walk in on her and your dad fucking like rabbits again. Eww. Lianne's a real blonde.

Keith is told to take grief leave. He keeps investigating Veronica's murder, and you see him sometimes but he always looks so, like, broken and scary-determined. You remember how close he and Veronica were, not like you and your dad.

The 09'ers pretend to care for a while because you and Logan and Duncan do, but eventually there's a party, and Madison has sex with what seems like everyone except the boyfriend who arranged for her barriers to be dropped, and everyone else forgets about Veronica sweetheart Mars. Madison gropes and fondles and makes out with you so skilfully that later you recommend she give lessons, but you never forget. Logan pushes Madison away when some of the guys tell him to let Madison give him a blow job, and you know he won't forget either because he doesn't look at you when he says no. Duncan isn't at the party.

Veronica Mars didn't kill herself but someone else did and that son-or-daughter of a bitch whore is going to roast in Hell for it.

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Two months after Veronica's death (murder, it _was_ murder), you plan Veronica's memorial service with Logan and Duncan and Keith. Logan takes over the video before anyone else can try to do it—he's says he'll make it best and you think that, god yeah, he'll do his best for Veronica—but you make him let you help even though he's good at it. Duncan is slowly edging away from "zombie" and he helps Keith pick the music and pictures—Veronica made some really pretty pictures that you never saw.

The memorial service is your own little slice of hell, but no one knows that. You whoop when Veronica, blushing but laughing, kisses Logan like you dared her to, and you shout, "_Oh my god it's _Veronica Mars" when the clip of her singing and dancing to the Spice Girls comes on.

You laugh and smile and toast Veronica Mars and let Weevil "comfort" you after (Logan is, as usual when it came to stuff like this, useless) but when you go home you lock the door to your room and sob into your pillow. You rehearse your answer, should anyone wonder why you're crying: it's just because of how Weevil pushed you against the concrete building—it scratched your back up a bit, nothing a hot bath won't fix. No one asks. You cry yourself to sleep.

Logan, on the other hand, shows up to school with a black eye. Something about a fight with a PCH'er. "But you should see the other guy," he tells you with a brittle, cocky smile.

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Madison Sinclair is a bitch, and she can't fit Veronica's spot as your balancing good BFF—especially after her little performance at Shelley Pomeroy's party—and Meg is _too_ good. Hannah—who you spotted on her first day of school, and adopted into your circle—is too young, but she reminds you a little bit of the younger Veronica so you let her follow you around. Someday maybe you'll teach her how to fuck Logan, since she's so besotted with him. A threesome could be hot, if Hannah's a quick learner.

And if Logan doesn't get all moony on you—he's starting that again. All the _I love you_'s and—when he sees you with Weevil outside the public pool—he's demanding again, "Why do you do this? Why are you such a cheating _bitch_?"

He's plastered when he says it, but you break up with him the next day when he's sober enough to get all broken-little-bitch.

The threesome won't happen with Logan, not unless you want to break him—and you don't, it doesn't even enter your head anymore when he turns on you. He's part of Veronica, and Veronica…Veronica wanted you and he to be together for some—for some reason she was always saying how much he loved you, like you would need that….

Whenever you see Veronica she's all, "He loves you, Lilly, really loves you, why are you being so mean to him?"

You let him hang for a while, and when he starts flirting with Hannah you start the "make-up" part of your break-up/make-up/more-than-make-out dance with Logan.

Aaron gets a kick out of it all. You flip your hair and smirk and tell him to hurry up and fuck you—if he can still get it up. He has nothing to do with any of your actions or other relationships and as far as you're concerned what you do with his son—dirty, manipulative, whatever—is none of his fucking business (no pun intended). Aaron's there to make you scream.

Veronica would have hid her head under a pillow, laugh-shrieking that you're so _crude_ sometimes.

Or maybe she would have left all on her own a long time ago. You're not sure you're still the fabulous Lilly Kane that Veronica Mars was best friends with—you aren't sure you've been entirely whole since she was murdered. Your only hope is to fill that hole with the truth.

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**Comments are love :)  
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** -Tjz**


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